Otaku Crave

When actress Erika Sawajiri recently attended the premiere of her new movie, “Closed Note,” she appeared on stage before the screening, looking pissed off at something. She stood still, arms folded, and uttered only three sentences the whole time. Her behavior immediately earned her the ire of tabloids and TV variety show panelists. Veteran singer Akiko Wada called her behavior unprofessional. Two days later, Sawajiri, 21, made an apology on her website. “It’s all my fault, and I must take responsibility for my actions. I really apologize for disappointing my fans and betraying their trust. As a professional actress, my actions were not appropriate. I promise to learn from this experience.”

As the fallout continued, her agent and Toho (the film’s distributor) announced that Sawajiri had canceled her attendance at a film festival in South Korea. The official website of the film had to be closed as a result of the massive number of comments by online visitors. Toho offered the explanation that Sawajiri had been exhausted from doing more than 100 media interviews to promote the film. It didn’t help: Sawajiri is still being referred to in the media as a movie queen brat.

Sawajiri made her breakthrough in 2005 with the TV melodrama “1 Littoru no Namida” (1 Liter of Tears). Last year at the Tokyo International Film Festival, she strutted the red carpet as if she was doing everyone a favor by showing up. In the month prior to the “Closed Note” event, she changed her appearance two or three times. One theory is that she has had work done on her teeth; hence the reluctance to smile. Another theory is she just didn’t like the clothes her stylist made her wear for the occasion. As some observers wittily remarked, she looked like a cavewoman.

Sawajiri’s case is an example of what happens when idols in Japan go off the rails. Amid Japan’s culture of shame, when a talent transgresses, he/she has to practice “jishuku” (self restraint). This starts with a public apology, often in the form of a deep bow with the manager at a press conference (or in Sawajiri’s case, online), followed by a self-imposed break from public appearances. It is very different from the U.S. (think Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, for example), where the practice is to deny, spin and, when all else fails, try rehab, or go to jail, after which they go on Jay Leno to show how they have changed.

Sawajiri’s management has gone into full damage control mode because she is a goldmine for the company. Besides her movies, she has appeared in 24 TV commercials this year. Unlike in the U.S., Japanese celebrities are employees of their management companies. They are paid a salary — the opposite of the U.S. where stars pay their agents a percentage and hire an army of publicists and lawyers to do damage control when necessary. In Japan, the production companies recruit their stars at a young age, train them and then supply them to the media, movies and events. A talent’s “shelf life” may depend on how scandal-free he or she remains. Big companies like Oscar Promotion, for example, teach their talents how to hold their alcohol, spend money wisely and be careful where they go and who they are with.

This doesn’t mean Japanese celebrities don’t have their share of scandals. They happen every week, and not just to younger talents. In recent months, guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei, 45, was fined for assaulting a colleague over “musical differences.” He apologized on his website. Cynics might say it’s much easier to apologize on a website when you don’t really feel sorry than it is to do the fake bow in public. Comedian Hidekazu Nagai, 37, a married man, had nothing to laugh about when he was fleeced in a badger game in the Philippines after he and a friend picked up a couple of local girls. Nagai’s agency announced that he is going to New York for a year to study English.

Women are expected to be more contrite than men, however. Former news anchor Mona Yamamoto, 31, lost her plum job on “News23″ after just a week when her affair with Diet member Goshi Hosono came to light in September 2006. She stayed out of the spotlight for a couple of months before restarting her career with the support of Beat Takeshi on Jan 1. She has slowly been making appearances on the variety show circuit.

Japan’s entertainment world is a tightly knit relationship between the production agencies and the media. Companies like Oscar, Johnny’s and Yellow Cab have tremendous power when it comes to their talents. The production companies are money-making machines that work very hard to create and protect an image that sells. Once the fallen stars are rehabilitated, they are farmed out to variety shows for their comeback. The production companies basically dictate to the networks who to use — that’s how powerful they are.

If Sawajiri turns out to be just another skyrocket (someone who goes up, burns real bright and then falls to earth), she will quickly be replaced in the firmament. The industry is like a revolving sushi restaurant: there is a never-ending selection to pick from.

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